As announced last week, Adobe has released its first series of security updates for 2016 to patch vulnerabilities affecting the company’s Acrobat and Reader products.
Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader DC versions 15.010.20056 (continuous), Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader DC 15.006.30119 (classic), and Acrobat XI and Reader XI 11.0.14 (desktop) resolve a total of 17 flaws rated critical with a priority rating of 2.
The vulnerabilities have been assigned the following CVE identifiers: CVE-2016-0931, CVE-2016-0932, CVE-2016-0933, CVE-2016-0934, CVE-2016-0935, CVE-2016-0936, CVE-2016-0937, CVE-2016-0938, CVE-2016-0939, CVE-2016-0940, CVE-2016-0941, CVE-2016-0942, CVE-2016-0943, CVE-2016-0944, CVE-2016-0945, CVE-2016-0946 and CVE-2016-0947.
Most of the security holes patched in Adobe Acrobat and Reader are use-after-free, double-free and memory corruption vulnerabilities that can be exploited for arbitrary code execution. The updates also fix a JavaScript API execution restriction bypass, and a code execution issue in Adobe Download Manager related to the directory search path used to find resources.
Adobe has credited the following researchers for reporting the flaws: AbdulAziz Hariri, Brian Gorenc and Jasiel Spelman of HPE’s Zero Day Initiative, Behzad Najjarpour Jabbari of Flexera Software, Chris Navarrete of Fortinet, Jaanus Kp of Clarified Security, Linan Hao of Qihoo 360, the researcher known as “kdot,” and Mahinthan Chandramohan, Wei Lei and Liu Yang working with Verisign’s iDefense program. Vladimir Dubrovin, Eric Lawrence, and KeLiu of Tencent have been credited for independently reporting the Download Manager vulnerability.
Adobe says there is no evidence that any of the patched Acrobat and Reader flaws have been exploited in the wild.
The company has also reminded users that Acrobat and Reader 10.x are no longer supported since November 2015.
Last year, Adobe released three security updates for Acrobat and Reader to patch a total of over 100 vulnerabilities. CVE Details shows that Adobe catalogued 460 vulnerabilities last year, of which 300 affected Flash Player.
Related Reading: Mac OS X, iOS Registered Most Disclosed Vulnerabilities in 2015
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
More from Eduard Kovacs
- Ransomware Group Used MOVEit Exploit to Steal Data From Dozens of Organizations
- Cybersecurity M&A Roundup: 36 Deals Announced in May 2023
- In Other News: Government Use of Spyware, New Industrial Security Tools, Japan Router Hack
- Apple Denies Helping US Government Hack Russian iPhones
- Zero-Day in MOVEit File Transfer Software Exploited to Steal Data From Organizations
- Russia Blames US Intelligence for iOS Zero-Click Attacks
- Cisco Acquiring Armorblox for Predictive and Generative AI Technology
- Moxa Patches MXsecurity Vulnerabilities That Could Be Exploited in OT Attacks
Latest News
- What if the Current AI Hype Is a Dead End?
- Microsoft Makes SMB Signing Default Requirement in Windows 11 to Boost Security
- Zyxel Urges Customers to Patch Firewalls Against Exploited Vulnerabilities
- Gigabyte Rolls Out BIOS Updates to Remove Backdoor From Motherboards
- SBOMs – Software Supply Chain Security’s Future or Fantasy?
- Ransomware Group Used MOVEit Exploit to Steal Data From Dozens of Organizations
- Cybersecurity M&A Roundup: 36 Deals Announced in May 2023
- Insider Q&A: Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity In Military Tech
